Deadpool test footage has been shot

January 13, 2012 - By Liam Goodwin

The has been talk of a Deadpool movie since X-Men Origins: Wolverine and it edged closer to a reality last year when visual effects artist Tim Miller was hired as director. Little has been heard since, but now Deadpool creator Robert Liefeld has hinted that some test footage has been shot, and he may have seen it.

They’ve got a great director on the movie, they’ve got a great script. I may or may have not seen some sort of test of footage that would blow your mind if you saw it and go holy crap and that’s Deadpool in costume. Katana swords, guns, shooting people’s faces off and making me laugh. And I may or may not have seen something that looks just like that. And you’ve got what would amount to the first R Rated X-Men movie. Because that script is R Rated.

They may or may not have wanted to shoot eight minutes to see how it would play. And all I can tell you, it’s close. It’s closer that it’s even been to going, or going Naaah, that’s too scary a proposition to make a R Rated Deadpool movie.”

While promoting the X-Men: First Class DVD and Blu-ray in October producer Lauren Shuler Donner said “we have a few more things to do. And then it’s up to the studio to decide whether we’re going to go forward or not”, so shooting this test footage may be what prompts 20th Century Fox to give it the green-light. Or it may not.

Zombieland writers Paul Wernick and Rhett wrote the script which has been described as “irreverent and violent”, so the studio is obviously taking a big risk here by making an R-rated movie with a new director. There were concerns Ryan Reynolds wouldn’t be able to play the Merc with a Mouth if Warner Bros. wanted to get going on a Green Lantern sequel, but with Lantern under-performing over the summer I don’t think those concerns remain.